Log Horizon: Tales From North Wen
by ThatOneDanny
Summary: On a somber evening in May, millions of players from the game Elder Tale find themselves trapped in the game. Blake happened to be one of these people. This is a story about his perspective within the Elder Tale world.


_This story is simply a different perspective of the events which took place._ Log Horizon _is owned by Mamare Touno and I do not own any rights to the original light novel._

01 Big Apple

May 3, 2018

The boy came to his senses, and he quickly looked around. It seemed he was in an overgrown town square. The foliage had traces of snow on their tops, the sky was a smoky shade of grey, and light snowflakes fluttered around. There were few other people in the square, and each person had a status bar next to their names. The boy grabbed the staff off of his back, just in case. He started to walk to the end of the road towards a ledge, but he kept stumbling. At one point, a menu popped open after the sorcerer thought about finding a way out. The menu displayed a stats screen, a friends list, and his own player card. His name tag read Blake, a level eighty three sorcerer. Sorcerer is one of the main classes in the video game _Elder Tale_ , which is the game world he's now stuck in.

"Blake, is that you?!" A blue haired, older looking man walked up to the young sorcerer with a grin, "Been awhile since you logged in!"

"Yeah, I guess so…" Blake replied slowly, stumbling as he responded, "I saw the Homestead of the Noosphere expansion came out today. I said 'What the hell?' and then suddenly I'm here in the Big Apple."

"But everything looks so real and such," The pirate looked around, "It doesn't exactly feel like we're really in a game."

The two players marched on, making their way into a more populated area. In the real world, it's known as Times Square. In Elder Tale, the square is mostly overgrown and the skyscrapers lay abandoned and crumbling. There's a market run mostly by Non Player Characters (NPCs), but merchant guilds sell and trade items there too. The NPCs sell beginner items, from simple necessities to rare items.

The boy had a thought about the NPCs, known as People of the Earth ingame. Walking up to a stand, the boy started a conversation with one of them. Usually in a videogame, NPCs have scripted lines and they cannot talk out of turn. The younger sorcerer asked the NPC merchant some questions, and he received genuine responses.

"I dunno why everyone's actin' weird." The merchant responded to Blake with a shrug, "Never seen any of 'em act like this unless they're on some sorta' raid."

The two adventurers continued on their way. The two eventually found themselves at the city borders. They looked at each other and shook their heads. There was no way they would be dumb enough to venture beyond the border just yet. They recently found themselves in the world of the Elder Tale video game, the two of them would still have to re-learn how to fight in tough situations without the help of an ingame menu.

Later, the adventurers found themselves on a road in a former popular area of the city. Adventurers hung around here, bought from the market, ate at the few food stands around, and nothing else really happened. On the corner of the street and the plaza, there was a small general store. This store happens to be owned by Blake, and he established it before the Catastrophe. Inside, there's a small ingredient section, and a survivalist section. If you were to compare it to the outside world, it would be like a Cumberland Farms or a 7-Eleven.

"I'm surprised," Blake remarked as he entered the establishment with his friend, "even though all of this is going on, my store still stands."

"You live on the third floor right?" The pirate asked while looking around curiously, "And don't you have two apprentices?"

"Yeah, actually." Blake quickly searches through his friend list, "Tori's online, so she's somewhere around. I'll send her a message."

"What about the other one?"

"Oh, Meaghan is a Person of the Land." Blake commented, "She comes around when she wants to."

The pirate took the back staircase to the third floor. The second floor, besides being extra storage for the facility, provided housing for Tori and Meaghan when they worked with Blake ingame. Blake paced around downstairs, still trying to take in everything. His life was just beginning to take off in the outside world, he had just received a letter from an important corporate executive inviting the teen to work for her and in return the company would have paid for his business school tuition.

Outside of _Elder Tale_ , Blake was actually Tyler Smith, a nineteen year old IT assistant at a local computer shop in his city. Having recently graduated high school, Blake decided to take a break and he decided to take a gap year. In this gap year, Blake discovered the MMORPG _Elder Tale_. After less than a week of playing, he was absolutely hooked. It took Blake awhile to understand the concepts of the game, but─

Blake's telepathy link rang quickly. The caller ID read out the user ID of the player calling: _VicTheAssassin_. Snapping Blake back to the harsh reality, he jumped and answered the telephone call. The voice on the other end was female, light and had a sing-song tone to it. It also sounded younger than Blake would have expected.

"Mister Blake, are you stuck in game too?"

"Yep, unfortunately." Blake commented with a lighthearted chuckle, "The one time something good happens to me IRL, and I get screwed here."

"I woke up at the Campsite, where Meaghan and I were staying the last time I played," Tori explained with a hint of confusion, "but Meaghan seems more…"

"Human?" Blake finished the assassins sentence with a sigh, "Yes, Meaghan is an actual human being with emotions in this world. NPCs don't technically exist, we're all people now."

"It's a lot to take in." Tori admitted with a light giggle, "Mister Blake, Meaghan said she would meet us back at the shop, and I'm packing up now. We should be back in the city before nightfall."

"Excellent." Blake, now relieved, sighed, "By the way, did you ever turn in that English assignment I did for you?"

"Yep!" Tori giggled, "And my teacher said it was one of my best essays so far!"

"Funny how that is," Blake responded, hearing the pirate clamber down the staircase, "Anyway, we'll talk later. Stay safe!"

The sorcerer disconnected the call. The pirate entered the store once more, this time he looked curious about something. The two waited around for Tori and Meaghan to show up in the market, and while that was happening guilds met up with their mates once more. From the storefront, Blake saw the leaders of three major guilds in the area walking down to the Guild Hall on the other side of town. Guilds are an important variable in the _Elder Tale_ game, whereas a player can create a group which others can join.

The major guilds in Big Apple are divided into three guilds, the Merchants, the Battle Guilds, and finally the Smaller Guilds. The biggest Merchant Guild is the Mariner's Helm. Besides the People of the Land, Mariner's Helm controls imports and exports from the Big Apple Harbor and the Seishin City route. They have a contract splitting control of the routes to major villages across Northeastern Wen with the People of the Land. When _Elder Tale_ was still a game, someone on the development team in North America implemented a small event specifically aimed at that trade agreement. This was a big event on fan blogs, as it showed at the time how the development team cared about its player base. Blake and his friends never joined a guild. His pirate friend, Mest, also never joined a guild. For awhile, there was talk of creating a guild but that never happened.

Hours passed. Mest and Blake spent time playing cards on the store floor. The front door blasted open, and two teenage girls entered the room. The first girl, about five-foot-four, wore a long black robe. Underneath the robe she wore black shorts, a black crop-top, and she had long black hair. Her name was Tori, and she was an Assassin. The second girl had short, pink hair. She wore a casual white t-shirt, dark blue pants, and custom crafted boots. This girl was Meghan, the Druid; not to mention that she's also a Person of the Land.

They all settled down for the evening, and as Blake finally became comfortable enough to sleep, loud noises could be heard outside. Someone shouted, and someone else sounded like they fell over.

Yes, it was going to be a long night.

 **A/N:** **Hiya, this is writer-san! I wrote this two years ago, and I meant to publish it... I never did, so now I'm going to publish it here! Please enjoy an alternate perspective of the events in Log Horizon! ^-^**


End file.
